2008 predictions

After 15 years in the tele/datacomm business, my prediction is; the US will fall further behind in broadband, wireless, and integrated services. People will become even more addicted to being connected with someone or some server 24/7. People will continue to make "low price" the main buying criteria and shop at Big Box/Warehouse stores. While at the same time complaining about lack of service and support, and wondering where it went. More service oriented businesses will fail, caused by pricing/distribution/saturation pressure applied by a handful of big retailers that have taken service out of the equation....to lower the price....which is how we buy. This comes at a time when product and service complexity is going through the roof.

i think we will see a decrease in purchases of ipods at least
but the mac computers will still rule the roost and i predict
that like cnet has said tactile will make a comeback and this will
also be a big year for flash memory !!

<b>Microsoft Phone</b>
We will hear rumors, or see advanced concept designs, for a Microsoft Zune-ish Phone

<b>Music Phones will dominate</b>
There will be hardly any phones that will not have a music player and most of them will bear high-quality video and music downloads/streaming like on the iPhone.

<b>iPhone will be more accessable</b>
iPhone will show up in the hands of more lower 'middle-class' budgets. May also see firmware updates.

<b>Social Utilities will advance</b>
Social utilities like Twitter, Jaiku and Facebook will continue to get more complex and fun with widgets etc.

My predictions fall into two broad categories, Safe and Wishful Thinking. I am reasonably confident that the Safe predictions will happen and would most likely die of shock if any in the wishful thinking category did.

Safe Predictions:

1. "Analysts" who haven't done any real work in IT in recent history and "industry pundits" will make inane predictions that are either (a) so vague that they are unmeasurable, (b) paid for by large corporations to build buzz around their products and cast doubt on their competitors, or (c) be based on their gut feelings rather than any provable facts and will therefore be completely wrong.

2. Prices of technology will continue to fall and make everyone who immediately jumped on last years shiny new toy regret the money they wasted by not waiting a couple of months.

3. Linux advocates will predict the end of Microsoft and victory in the desktop market.

4. Microsoft advocates will predict that Linux will once again fail to capture any significant portion of the desktop market.

5. Microsoft won't disappear and Linux will continue to grow in popularity as a desktop OS.

Wishful Thinking:

1. Companies will realize that DRM is not what customers want and not in their best interest anyways and will drop all of their efforts in this regard.

2. The DMCA will be repealed due to it's abrogation of consumer rights.

3. The US Patent Office will reorganize and place a moratorium on new software patents while all current software patents are reviewed to clean up the current mess in the patent system.

4. Someone with an ounce of integrity and a modicum of understanding of what people in the US really want from their government will be elected president and some level of sanity will be seen in Washington.

2008 the wireless pollution syndrome will be coined, starting with wireless phones, printers, speakers, keyboards, mice, and internet. Symptoms will include headache, interference, packet collisions, and slowed internet service. People will become violent and any one with a blue tooth headset will be beaten on sight. Your wireless PS3 controller will accidentally actuate your computer controlled house and set of the fire alarm while your in the shower. The GPS directed Fire Department will be sent three house down from you, while the traffic light signaling device on the fire truck sends it's radio beam out which closes your garage door down on your wife's new Bimmer.

PS/2 will not be included in new desktop and laptop computers and USB will upgrade to USB 2.5 or 3.0.

The gaming world will still be dominated by the wii because of the more "casual" games for nongamers but Nintendo and other 3rd party developers will also develop better games for gamers, Super Smash Bros Brawl being one. Also the Wii will get better and more attractive channels and updates that will attract many more people to the system.

2008 will be the biggest year so far for wireless technology.

If google becomes a cell phone provider they'll become the microsoft of cell phone providers, not completely wiping out other providers but most people will just go to google.

Desktops will be in higher demand the laptops and notebooks

Vista will get better and eventually people will want it over XP but not til later in the year.

Higher powered PCs will not include CD drives. DVD drives will still be there. Software companies will put everything on DVD and everything that was on CD before can be downloaded from the internet.

CD players will almost cease to exist but CD's will still line store shelfs. Yes it's stupid.

A music company will release very cheap SD cards that you cant write anything on them. The purpose of the SD cards is to try to replace music CDs by putting whole albums onto an SD card. Like I said, you can't write anything to them but you can rip the songs to your MP3 player. Also movies will be available in this format.

If people continue to hate Vista, windows will stop all attempts at making it better and release Windows XP 2.

i've been saying this for a while and so have many others, apple will come out wit a new computer that is only a screen essentially it will ba a big iphone/ipod touch except with all the normal operating system and compter abilities. Keyboard will appear on the touch screen, for a mouse you can either touch what you want to click or you can use aprt of the screen as a trackpad the trackpad area will look like a program so you can drag it around to various parts of the screen. It may or may not have an optical drive, a webcam will be built it possibly 2.0mp or higher. To cover the screen will be a flip cover. Imagine a spiral notebook with only two pages, one is the screen the other is a cover.

my predictions are 1. the ipod taking a plunge in sales; 2. google to make an OS; 3. the apple ipod to reach at least something close to a terabyte by the holiday season; 4. finally a good electric car that doesnt need to recharge every 3 hours!; 5. the MOTORAZR to become much smarter and easier to use; and 6. the first flash memory HARD DRIVE of at least 100GB

how far along are we on the "**** Tracy" wristwatch from the old comic strip. It had all sorts of tricks but especially a two-way video-phone. NOT similar to the fat one that paul mccartney had about 10 years ago, but a small one like a casio calculator wristwatch. He used it to talk to his secretary back at the office.

i think Microsoft will lose much more clients than ever because of their catastrophic os Vista !

we'll see more & more Mac's laptops because they're just much better than Microsoft's Vista

iPhone? honestly don't know if they'll unlock it or not. it's just adorable but the problem is the budget, that's why people (specialy students like me) try to find an unlocked one

My only real prediction is that the major pc manufacturers will try and ape the early success of the Asus eee and mimic the form factor (subnotebook? really??? we can't come up with something more creative? And don't give me "mobile internet device" cause that sucks too!) but with limited success. This will mostly occur because a) they are stupid and don't keep the price down (try and put a bigger drive/screen/processor) b) it will be loaded down with crapware and/or XP c) people in the US realize how much Asus laptops rule.

Also, I hope we see more advances in OS's (read: linux) running out of RAM, its pretty much awesome (Note- this will not happen)

The format wars will intensify, HD-DVDS and Blu-Rays and players will get cheaper. The music industry will soon stop putting its focus on protecting its music and start selling non-protected music online. The PS3 will start to gain some ground in becoming cheaper and more desirable in the console wars. HD-TVs will start to stop including old analog tuners as the 2009 Digital Era is fast approching. Old picture tube and rear-projection TVs will stop being sold, and soon it will be very hard to find a standard-definition television. Almost all of the TV networks will switch to HD broadcasting by the end of the year. Smartphones will make a rise to the most desirable phones out there. Other companies are already making rivals to the iPhone and will continue to make them more competitive. I wouldnt be suprised by a Razr-Smartphone.

I predict...

1.) Hundreds of Millions of new users everywhere will discover and enjoy GNU/Linux! GNU/Linux will finally give regular users, businesses, and institutions a true choice in Operating Systems to Windows.

2.) The US Government will adopt and enforce the use of Open Standards such as the Open Document Format (ODF). Meanwhile, OOXML will fail again for not being open standards friendly and for attempting to tarnish the luster of the prestigious International Standard Organization.

3.) Technology will be more exciting than ever because people will finally get to use Open Standards such as GNU/Linux and will be truly enabled by technology because of it.

Shannon VanWagner
https://healthysystem.blogspot.com

I think all other tech advances at this point pale when compared to the fact that Honda has come out with a production fuel cell vehicle. No internal combustion, period! It's only available in CA for now, but it's the first public step towards the death of O.P.E.C., big oil, and greenhouse gases. It's a technology that should be providing all of the worlds power within a decade. Our only need for oil will be lubrication, and we have numerous synthetic lubricants. We should embrace this advance wholeheartedly, and make every effort to see that it spreads as quickly as possible. The drop in demand will kick the bottom out of the price of oil if there are no other short-term advantages to this amazing breakthrough.

Due to the price of oil and the eroding value of our dollar, prices for tech equipment such as laptops and cell phones are going to rise. Price pressures and the resulting declining sales will force manufacturers to offer more features but charge more at the same time.

Need I say more. There has not been a more remarkable advance in laptop computing then the availability of solid state hard drives. As the prices drop, any large volume buyer would be foolish not to buy in. These drives will go a long way to making laptops truly portable while saving money, time and energy.

The iPhone is over hyped. I know of no other large volume cellular product every introduced that would not be considered a flop with the metrics and problems that followed the iPhone. All the hype is all the news. Look for disappointments in this category, albeit, success at Apple with their Macs.

Wireless carriers will continue to act like owners of little fiefdoms. They will not change. Just like companies like AOL missed the boat on advances like Skype and Myspace, the carriers will miss the boat on any new technology or network that liberalizes wireless. Look for them to pay whatever it takes to attempt to stop innovation as usual.

The owners of major corporate entities will continue to run them into the ground while raking as much cash out of them to line their pockets as possible. More deals will emerge as they end up red faced and unable to pay the bills.

Blackberry continues to roll, physical media is dead, WiMax comes into it's own, PC makers will stop charging extra for integrated wireless options.

Here are my predictions by category:

Videogames:
The Nintendo Wii will continue to be the best selling console and Nintendo will finally resolve their production issues. Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, and Wii Fit will be the best selling games of the year.

The Xbox360 will stay in second place and will get Crysis, Gears of War 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4 this year.

The Playstation 3 will still continue to sell poorly and remain in 3rd place. Little Big Planet and Metal Gear Solid 4 will help sales a little but not enough to make a difference.

Computers
Apple will hit double digit market share.
Apple will release new multi-touch laptops.
Microsoft will release Windows XP SP3 and it will be really good.
Vista will continue to struggle because of XP SP3.

HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray
Both formats will continue to struggle because of cheap up-converting DVD players and online HD movie downloads/rentals.

I think the laser TVs will start to become the next big thing,as LCD and plasma have gotten so widespread and relatively inexpensive that they are not much more costly than a large TV would have been several years ago. Also people will wake up and realize that iPods are ridiculously overpriced for what they are,and begin to purchase regular MP3 players that have three times the features at half of the cost.

computerized flying cars no licence to fly needed even the blind and drunk could travel safely no need for big gas gusseling jets they can run these flying cars on compressed air and tell big oil goodbye and the automobile becomes obsolete.no more making the automobile the number one killer of teens and young adults .age 15 to 22 the auto is the number one killer for that age group.

I expect faster and micro sized desktops and Lap tops based on nano technology appearing in the market

There will be a constant battle between DVD/HD and Blu-ray as the prices go down until there is a clear winner . Also, there will be more optical uses for PC';s in the form of glasses and a chip that is similar to ones running PC's now , but through and on the lens.
Cell phones will continue to battle for an improvement and take the form of a handheld PC that will outclass the need for any desktop model. Since , we are so lazy as consumers , all forms of technology will be under the auspices of how to make life easier , especially the nausea of califlower ears and cell phones won't be seen anymore. They will be so small and wireless that it will appear everybody is talking to themselves. Just stay off the road and don't bother me with your conversations in every facet of life .